


Stay With Me

by Ketlingr



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 03:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ketlingr/pseuds/Ketlingr
Summary: After the curse has been lifted, everyone's memories return. Memories of their loved ones and friends who had been caught by the curse for so long. It is during the festivities when LeFou's fond memories of a different, a more... amiable Gaston return, and he begins to wonder where the man is. He sets out to find his friend, and perhaps to find out whether prince Adam was the only man to be turned into a beast by the curse.





	Stay With Me

The festivities were in full swing. There was music, dancing, laughter - for just having tried to murder each other until a few hours ago, everyone was surprisingly cheerful, LeFou thought. So drenched in relief and wonder that nobody had even looked their way when LeFou and Stanley had danced together. It was as though they were all blinded, delirious. 

Only as the evening turned to night and a few drinks had been had did people stop dancing and hugging and started talking instead. All around there were confused looks, people waking up, memories returning. Connections being made. 

“I haven’t seen you in so long.” 

“None of us remembered, we… we didn’t even know we were missing you.”

There were tears, too. 

LeFou was watching, following their conversations. And he had memories of his own. Not of any of the people caught in the castle, he had never had any relatives or friends in the village besides Stanley and… and Gaston. And he remembered, suddenly, the man’s bright, confident smile. Cocky, yes, but with no trace of the violent, deranged beast that he had become in his chase for Belle. 

An icy chill ran down his back at the realisation. What if… his eyes flicked towards Belle and prince Adam, staring. In shock. 

What if the prince hadn’t been the only beast to be cursed by that evil witch? 

At Stanley’s concerned touch to his arm, LeFou remembered a much stronger hand resting on his shoulder. Protectively, not threateningly. As the crowd grew more cheerful again, all LeFou could hear was his best friend’s laughter, full of mirth, without even a hint of cruelty. He clenched his fists, eyes filling with tears of anger. Because it wasn’t fair. To turn his friend, his… Gaston into a monster like that. 

“If Gaston hadn’t shot me,” Adam’s voice penetrated the fog surrounding LeFou’s thoughts, “... who knows if she would’ve kissed me in time.” The prince laughed. Belle smiled gently, flustered, and put an arm on his hand as though to say ‘of course I would have’. Would she? Would she have kissed him at all? Maybe this was why that witch turned Gaston into such a cruel parody of himself, LeFou thought bitterly, to use him, make him part of her games. 

“Where is he, anyway?” Tom asked from a few seats over. LeFou froze. With all of them still dazed by their confused and mingling memories, even he hadn’t thought to wonder about this. 

“Where is Gaston,” he repeated, not caring how choked up he sounded, heart beating hard in his throat. 

Belle’s and Adam’s faces fell. Then their eyes widened, Belle reaching up to cover her mouth. LeFou was out of his chair before Adam could even speak the words, “he fell… from the tower.” Ignoring Stanley calling his name, LeFou fled, leaving all of them behind. He had to find Gaston. The impulse was irrational, there was no way the man could possibly have survived, but if all LeFou could do was retrieve his body, that’s what he was going to do. He owed him that much. 

As he ran from the castle, he could barely make out the path in the darkness. The angry tears blurring his vision did him no favours, either, and he stumbled, falling painfully onto all fours. Spitting curses at the others as he got to his feet again. How could they sit in there, reminiscing in each others’ arms without a care for the man who had protected them for all this time, the man whom they had followed into battle not half a day ago. The man who had cared for LeFou when he had fallen grievously ill after the war. Who had kept him safe from scorn and harm of the children they had grown up with. Who had been more than just a brother and friend to LeFou for as long as he could remember. 

This man,  _ this _ Gaston would never have left LeFou behind during a battle. He would never have threatened him. 

Vengeful anger filled LeFou, and he turned to cursing the witch under his breath for what she had taken from him. He was blindly stumbling into the darkness, completely without orientation or an idea of where he was going. But what did it matter, anyway? 

It was only when the energy of his anger had left him and only the steady flow of precious memories remained that LeFou realised that not only did he not know where he was going, he also had no clue where he  _ was _ in the first place. He was utterly lost. To his left, the forest was a dark wall, thorny underbrush barring passage to him. LeFou couldn’t even make out the path behind him, and having turned once or maybe twice he wasn’t even sure which direction he had come from anymore. It was cold and the hair on the back of his neck was standing up, the skin prickling. LeFou looked up to his left, where usually Gaston’s face would show grim confidence. Gaston would know exactly what to do. LeFou, on the other hand, had never been in a situation like this. Not on his own.

There was a groan. It was faint - and it couldn’t have been clearer if it had been a shout. 

“Gaston!” LeFou shouted and spun around. It couldn’t be! He was nowhere near the castle, and Gaston was… He couldn’t even think it. Another groan. Distant, fainter than before. Gaston was in pain.

Panicked, LeFou looked around for a way out, but there was nothing, only forest to three sides of him and sheer rock in his back. Reaching out to touch its surface with one hand to have some orientation in the darkness, LeFou followed the sound of another groan, until suddenly the cold surface was gone. Instead, the rock opened up into what appeared to be a cave. 

Heart pounding, LeFou stepped inside. A pained shriek pulled his chest into a knot and he stumbled on, until he was surrounded by nothing but blackness. He didn’t turn, knew that he would only lose orientation and would likely not be able to see the entrance anymore anyway. The floor was sloped downwards, the cave’s mouth would be long out of view. And what good would it do him to see it, anyway? He needed to press on, he couldn’t think about the way back right now. Gaston was alive, he was in pain. He needed help. LeFou would find him, he had to. 

The cave seemed to wind into the mountain endlessly, and for a while there were no sounds besides LeFou’s steps and his breathless panting. Time and again he stumbled into protruding rocks, bumped into walls whenever the cave took a turn and fell onto his hands and knees, skidding down the gravelly slope of the floor. His palms were burning, ripped raw, and LeFou was losing hope. He hadn’t heard Gaston in too long, it was driving him mad. 

And then there was another moan, and LeFou would press on, deeper into the cave until suddenly there was no cave anymore. All around him were high stone walls and far above his head was the night’s sky. It was barely any lighter than it had been in the cave, but nonetheless, LeFou could see a shape on the rocky floor and that was all that mattered. 

“Gaston!” he yelled and ran, as fast as his exhausted legs would carry him, falling to his battered knees next to the other man. There was no reaction, not even a sound of pain. LeFou’s hands were hovering over the motionless body, scared to touch him. He was no educated man and far from a doctor, but he knew men who had fallen from heights should not be moved. So instead of his hands, LeFou’s eyes were frantically searching for visible injuries - and found none. After such a fall… he looked up to where he could make out the edge of the cliff, the arches of the castle high over his head. 

There should have been blood. Broken bones. A caved-in skull - the images in his mind were gruesome, making his head spin as they threatened to overwhelm him, so he looked back down at Gaston’s face. His perfect face. Perfectly still, perfectly unharmed. There was not a scratch on his body that LeFou could see. Gaston was lying on the floor as though sleeping. Gently, hesitantly, LeFou reached out to lay his flat hand onto Gaston’s chest. He flinched when he felt a heartbeat, felt warmth in the other man’s body. 

“Gaston,” he whispered, touching the man’s forehead, smoothing a lock of hair away from his eyes. “I’m here now.” LeFou looked down at Gaston, expecting him to wake up any moment. After all, he had found him, against all odds,  _ miraculously.  _ It had to be part of the curse. It had to be! 

“I’m here now,” LeFou repeated, slightly louder, voice breaking. “Come on, Gaston, you can’t… you…” He wasn’t. Sleeping, maybe, magically, somehow. But not… that. Never that. “Come on, Gaston, tell me what I need to do,” LeFou begged, whispering again. He looked up, eyes hunting for any sign of the witch, of  _ anyone _ . There were only rocks. “Tell me what I need to do, I’m here, I’m here, I found him,  _ please, _ tell me what I need to do.” 

Silence.

Just rocks. 

And LeFou. And Gaston. Dead still. Not dead. Never dead. 

“It’s not fair!” LeFou yelled, his voice echoing from the walls of the cliff. “Tell me!” Mocking him. “You can’t have him! It’s not fair, it’s not fair!” His face was wet, one hand grasping Gaston’s shirt tightly, the other protectively resting in his dark hair. He was shaking, he couldn’t breathe, the darkness of the cliff walls closing in on him, his own voice thrown back at him over and over and over… 

“Shut up!” he cried out at the voices and the echoes died down, leaving LeFou with only his own sobs and silence for company again. “It’s not fair…” His hold on Gaston’s shirt loosened and he leaned forward to place his head where his hand had been, resting his ear against Gaston’s chest. He could hear his heart. Could feel his chest rise just barely with every breath. Through the tears the pale form of Gaston’s face blurred and mingled with the darkness. 

LeFou remembered this, too. Resting his head on Gaston, listening to his heart. Strong fingers stroking his back, a low hum making Gaston’s chest vibrate against his ear. Warm summer wind wrapped around both of them. Teenagers, on top of the world. LeFou hadn’t been afraid of anything. 

He knew better now. He should have been afraid. Not of Gaston leaving - Gaston would never have left him behind. But of Gaston being taken from him. It wasn’t fair. 

Gaston had always taken care of him, unconditionally. 

LeFou shivered. Had he fallen asleep? It was still dark around him. He panicked at the cold, but it was only above him. Gaston was warm. His heart was beating. Again, LeFou shivered from the cold. The gravel was biting into his shins. He shifted, dazed from crying, but quiet now; lifted Gaston’s head and shoulders carefully and scooted into place underneath. With Gaston’s head resting in his lap, LeFou began stroking his forehead with his fingertips. 

“You know, I was always afraid you’d marry one day,” LeFou said softly. “I thought you might forget about me.” He smiled wistfully. “That’s not… that’s not the whole reason, though. A friend doesn’t forget their friends when he marries. A brother doesn’t forget his brother. There’s… there’s only one kind of person you forget when you marry, isn’t there.” LeFou felt tears well up in his eyes again and laughed bitterly, using his free hand to wipe at his face with his sleeve. There was so much more he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. It was stuck in his throat, and so he just sat in silence, petting Gaston’s head until his legs fell asleep. 

It was freezing at the bottom of the cliff, but LeFou didn’t want to put Gaston’s head back onto the floor, so he took off his vest and balled it up into a pillow, pushing it in place of his legs. His palms and knees were burning, his legs tingling painfully with the returning blood flow. Looking down at Gaston, LeFou felt utterly small and helpless. He crawled over next to the other and decided to lie down close to him. Perhaps to keep him warm. Or to keep him company.  

On his back, feeling Gaston by his side, LeFou looked up at the sliver of night sky. He was exhausted, and yet more alert than he had ever felt. 

“You know,” he said quietly, “we haven’t done this in a while. I remember you told me all about the stars. I… I know you probably made most of the stories up, but I was always very impressed. And you told me secrets. I always imagined you had one secret for every star, there were so many things you told me.” LeFou reached out into the dark and found Gaston’s hand. He held on to it while he spoke, the other’s limp fingers reminding him painfully that this time was different than all the other times they had looked at the stars. LeFou took a deep breath. 

“You know,” he said again, “in all these years, I never told you any secrets. Because I only ever had one. I haven’t thought of you as my brother in years, Gaston. Maybe I haven’t ever. Not one day since you picked me up out of the dust and fixed my bleeding nose and chased down every single one of the boys who beat me up.” His thumb stroked over the inside of Gaston’s palm. All he could see were the familiar stars.

“I can’t think of you as a brother Gaston. Because… because I love you. Deeply. And I can’t… I can’t lose you, Gaston. You’re my world. You’re my… my stars and… it’s so, so dark, Gaston. Even if you can never love me back, I need you to just… be there. To tell me lies about the stars and secrets about yourself. Don’t leave me, Gaston. I love you… Gaston.” 

He squeezed Gaston’s hand. 

Gaston’s hand, gently, squeezed back. 


End file.
